Many businesses dismiss the idea of using an online HR system on the grounds of it being too costly or an unnecessary expense. But HR software can actually be an enormous benefit to businesses of all different sizes if it’s chosen correctly and can help in a number of ways to streamline the business and save time and money in the long term. From ensuring that staff is trained properly and continues their education within the business to improving personnel costs and improving employee engagement for more motivated staff, HR software has a number of benefits. Here are five ways in which an online HR system can help your business and why you should invest sooner rather than later.
Greater Efficiency when Making Decisions
Every business owner knows that when it comes to making decisions that will make or break the company, data is invaluable. Having relevant data available at the click of a button makes the entire decision-making process much more efficient and more effective. A good quality HR system, such as Cezanne’s HR software enables you to input and store certain areas of information that are most relevant to your business specifically. The data provided by software provides businesses with the opportunity to understand a specific scenario and make decisions and actionable insights that create a positive impact. So, you never have to make a decision without the data to back it up again.
Improved Levels of Productivity
If there’s one thing that HR teams get lumbered with, it’s a lot of manual record-keeping that can eat into their time and make processes much less efficient. If every single record has to be dated by hand, there’s no time for staff to work on more important tasks that will benefit the business as a whole. However, by using software to record and store information, staff will be freed up to work on higher-order functions.
Another benefit to this is that employee inquiries are much quicker to resolve as the data is easily accessible. Many HR software options even provide a self-service option for employees so that HR teams can save even more time. Another way in which HR systems can speed up processes is within the extremely time-consuming task of recruiting new staff members. Recruitment takes up a lot of time for HR staff but by using online HR software, each stage of the selection process, as well as employee evaluations and training up new staff, can be handled much more efficiently. This won’t just save time for HR teams but will also provide substantial benefits to the business in employee retention.
Online HR platforms like Zenefits or Rippling can improve your employees’ experience as well. Zenefits gives the employee HR functions such as timekeeping, the ability to request PTO, monitor their benefits, update them as needed, and view the status of their performance reviews. Your company can grow with Zenefits by adding additional tools. Rippling, on the other hand, requires additional vendors to expand your HR functionality beyond the basics.
Measurable ROI
One concern that business owners have when investing in any software is how much benefit the company will see as a result. The benefit of HR software is that the ROI can be measured. If you choose software that meets your business needs specifically, you’ll be able to reduce the costs of staff labor and ensure that fewer functions are affected by human error. With HR systems, businesses will be able to identify inefficiencies and the associated costs as well, such as where there is a visibility of absence trends and the costs, the ability to minimize reduced workforces during holiday periods, and access to turnover figures for greater information regarding internal processes so as to improve the situation. Some processes can be difficult to measure in terms of the benefits they provide to the business, but with HR software, business owners can clearly see how the system is impacting the company.
Improved Business Management Communications
HR software can streamline communication within the business between teams. Not only can software make it easier for HR teams to communicate directly to inform staff of business updates or request information from them, but it can also be used to automatically update the information so that staff always have access to the latest data. Handling communication can be a time-consuming aspect of any business, but software can help to streamline the processes and also results in less paperwork. It can also be used to provide automatic notifications and reminders so that staff is able to stay more productive as well as the business stays compliant with business regulations.
Another benefit to using online software for HR processes is that communications can be proven. HR solutions provide great information in a number of fields, but they can also be used for accountability. For example, in the event of a legal dispute, how can a company provide evidence that an employee was made aware of a specific policy or trained how to use a particular piece of equipment? While communicating via email is fine, it can be all too easy for someone to deny ever seeing an email. But the benefit of using HR systems is that there are read and accept functionalities that provide not just a paper trail but also proof that employees have read and understood a specific message. This provides accountability and protects businesses from any comeback later on regarding certain processes and policies.
Improved Data Security
In the age of GDPR compliance, data security is more important than ever. But by keeping the information in paper forms, the risk of a data breach or loss of data is much higher. What’s more, in the more traditional ways of storing paperwork, staff would have to spend considerable amounts of time going through filing cabinets to find the appropriate documents. One of the biggest benefits of investing in online HR software is that it provides a much more secure solution to confidential data. This ensures compliance with data regulations, protects information from physical losses such as fires, and also means that only certain people can access the data to protect it from internal hacking. And any documents or files that need to be found quickly can be accessed from anywhere in the world at a moment’s notice without the need to go through endless amounts of paperwork.